Speaking in front of the 8th District police station in the French Quarter, State Police Superintendent Col. Michael Edmonson said that the troopers, who were initially scheduled to leave after Labor Day, will stay through November.

"I want to assure the citizens of the city of New Orleans, I want to assure those that are visiting New Orleans from not only around this state and around this country, but around the world, that the state police is not leaving," Edmonson said. "We're not going anywhere."

Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked the state police for assistance after the June 29 Bourbon Street shooting that left 9 people wounded and killed a 21-year-old nursing student.

Edmonson wasn't able to fill Landrieu's initial request for a permanent deployment but he dedicated 100 troopers. They started July 3, mainly patrolling the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny. The number of troopers might dip slightly during the next two months, but residents won't notice the difference, Edmonson said.

"Our goal coming into the city was to allow the New Orleans Police Department to do everything they can to find the person who did that," Edmonson said of the Bourbon Street shooting.

One of the suspects in that case, Trung Le, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of manslaughter and attempted second-degree murder.

During the past 10 weeks, state police have answered 1,600 calls for service, made over 500 arrests with nearly 1,000 criminal charges, seized over $800,000 in illegal narcotics, nearly $900,000 in narcotics related currency, and 45 illegally possessed firearms.

They have also recovered 27 stolen vehicles and issued over 2,000 citations for traffic violations.

"When you heard all of those figures, that's helping us into the future," said Interim NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison. "Those suspects are not on the streets. Those drugs are not on the street. We've affected the citizens and hopefully their quality of life will begin to get better now that we've done that."

There was concern that crime would begin to rise in the French Quarter once the troopers left the city, so a coalition of businesses voted in early August to pay off-duty officers to work an additional 213 hours, in total, each week.

The initiative, scheduled for a six-month trial period, is meant to increase the presence of police in the French Quarter where the number of officers has dropped from 150 to 100 in four years.